Deforestation

Fact:

The lungs of the Earth, the Amazon rainforest, is being destroyed for cheeseburgers!? Yes, 91% of the Amazon destruction was to create grazing lands for cattle or to grow GMO soy to feed cows, pigs and chicken in Europe and China.

Clarification:

The Amazon rain forest is known as the Lungs of the Earth because of its indispensable function cleaning up the global atmosphere. This forest is under siege, primarily to raise cows or to grow GMO soy crops to feed cows, pigs and chickens.

References:

The statistic used here was reported in a comprehensive World Bank study of 2004. Since the study came out, large agricultural corporations such as Cargill have pledged to eliminate foods sourced from deforested lands in their supply chain, but the New York times recently reported that this pledge has not really amounted to much. In our current culture, large corporations have no choice but to meet consumer demand at the lowest price possible, and therefore, it is up to the consumer to change.